Tag Archives: SMS

“This article examined how higher education students used text and instant messaging for academic purposes with their peers and faculty. Specifically, comfort level, frequency of use, usefulness, reasons for messaging and differences between peer-to-peer and peer-to-instructor interactions were examined. Students noted that they were very comfortable with using both text and instant messaging. Text messaging was used weekly with instructors and daily with peers. Instant messaging was used rarely with instructors but weekly with peers. Students rated text messaging as very useful and instant messaging as moderately useful for academic purposes. Key reasons cited for using both text and instant messaging included saving time, resolving administrative issues, convenience and ease of use. Text messaging appears to be the preferred mode of communication for students with respect to communicating with both peers and instructors. It is concluded that both text and instant messaging are useful and viable tools for augmenting student’s communication among peers and faculty in higher education.”

The Durham University Blackboard Users Conference on January 8/9, 2013 is all about ‘Make do or Spend?‘ next year (spelt ‘sp£nd’ – see what they did there?) with the focus clearly on the VLE (or other technologies) and how well we use it in the face of stiff competition for student numbers in the current economic climate.

Technology training and skill development for students is more important than new, more, or “better” technology.

Students use social networks for interacting with friends more than for academic communication.

ECAR Recommends

Look to emerging or established leaders (other institutions, other countries, other industries) for strategies to deliver instruction and curricular content to tablets and smartphones. Learn from their exemplary strategies for IT support and security with student devices as well as planning, funding, deploying, and managing instructional technologies, services, and support.

Prioritize the development of mobile-friendly resources and activities that students say are important: access to course websites and syllabi, course and learning management systems, and academic progress reports (i.e., grades).

Bridge the gap between the technologies that have seen the greatest growth (e-portfolios, e-books/e-textbooks, and web-based citation/bibliographic tools) and students’ attitudes about their importance. Focus training/skill-building opportunities for students, professional development opportunities for faculty, and support service opportunities on these emerging technologies.

Use e-mail and the course and learning management system for formal communication with students. Experiment with text messaging and instant messaging/online chatting, and don’t focus efforts on using social networks and telephone conversations to interact with students.
(See the 2012 report for a full list key messages, findings, supporting data, and actionable results.)

While it’ll take some time to digest the report and it’s findings/recommendations, they have also produced this wonderful Infographic:

Students at Purdue University are experimenting with a new application developed at the school called Hotseat that integrates Facebook, Twitter, and text messaging to help students “backchannel” during class.

The idea behind this isn’t new; using social media in conferences allow participants to engage the speaker(s) to exchange ideas and questions on the fly.

The difference here is that Hotseat (expect a Trademark on this soon?) displays real-time comments from Facebook, Twitter, SMS, and MySpace. As reported on the Mashable website, over 70% of the 600 students in the pilot classes are using the channel.

Purdue University have produced this introductory video, have a look;

While the application enables student participation, the study goes on to note that the tutors need to be “resilient enough to take any potential criticism or even corrections from students in real-time”, but it is also a

“… valuable tool for enhancing learning. The students are engaged in the discussions and, for the most part, they are asking relevant questions.”

Nice, I like this. It reminds me of the PowerPoint Twitter Presentation from SAP Web 2.0 where you can include a live Twitter feed into your presentation based on hashtags or other Twitter methods.

I strongly urge you to download this and take a look through it … hell, even try it out. If you are presenting at any kind of event in the next few months it’s guaranteed there will be a #hashtag assigned to the event, so use it and use it well.